The Buried Circle

by Jenni Mills

  The rain gradually stopped and the wind died, and soon there was no sound in my ears but the drip of wet leaves. I climbed back up to the crown of the hill, to the edge of the trees. The view from here was like a careless watercolour. Avebury village and the circle were hidden, but the top of the church tower rose above a viridian wash of leaves. To the south and west, there were drenched fields, umbers and ochres and a dash of burnt sienna, under a sky that was heavy Prussian blue and Payne’s grey except for that single bright lemon streak. I could see the brown gash at Trusloe where Mr Keiller had given the land for the new houses, and Longstones Field, and the woods that hid the racing stables and Yatesbury. I remembered the watercolour set he had given me, four summers ago, and the thought of it made me warm.

  I sat for a while at the wood’s margin, waiting for the lemon crack in the sky to fade, and real darkness to fall. When I was as sure as I could be that the sun had set, I went back down the slope, whispered the Lord’s Prayer to Charlie, then dug my hands into the soft soil of the crumbling bank, and filled in the entrance to the hole, so that no one would find him.

  I didn’t turn to look back, once my feet were on the track down the hill, because there was nothing left to see in the gathering night, but I knew he was there, and always would be.

  Here’s what I think about in the night, though, the nights when I know there are lights up on Windmill Hill: someone looking for Charlie, maybe that devil come back to search for his son. I think of the moment before the bomb fell on the house two doors away, when I held him to my face and breathed into his tiny nostrils like he was a sick lamb. Did I imagine that his little chest heaved? And, if it did, what happened then? What happened between the bomb and me being outside the house?

  CHAPTER 50

  Fran looks smaller than usual in the hospital bed. She’s asleep, curled on her side, the bruising hidden but a padded dressing on her forehead. An oxygen tube emerges from her nostrils; more plastic tubing snakes from under the bedclothes to a drip stand by the bed.

  ‘Dehydrated,’ says the nurse. ‘Do you want to sit with her a bit? She’ll probably wake. Visiting hours are over, officially, but…’

  She doesn’t wake.

  She looks different, now, younger, a woman living in a place I have never been to, inhabiting a set of memories I can’t begin to guess. All present time, all will, all I am pared away to I was, and then even that whittled to nothing at all.

  ‘Stay at my place,’ says John, as we walk across the empty car park towards the pickup. It’s after eleven, what little light there is left in the sky swamped by the hospital’s halogen glare.

  ‘I ought to have stayed here.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. She’ll wake when she wakes. Nowhere to sleep, anyway.’

  ‘I could stretch out on a couple of chairs–’

  ‘The nurses don’t want you around overnight. Better not to antagonize them, believe me.’

  ‘What–patients and their relatives get in the way of the smooth running of the hospital?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  We’ve reached the pay machines. I push the parking ticket into the slot. ‘Drop me at Trusloe. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘No.’ The overhead light reveals concern on his tired face as I feed in the coins. ‘I’ve bodged the glass in the back door with a sheet of plywood, ought to hold but…’

  ‘Whoever it was isn’t coming back. They were so scared, they didn’t even stop to nick her purse.’

  ‘Yeah, and where are her door keys, then?’

  My knees lock. ‘What?’

  ‘Not on the hall table. Not on the hook by the back door. I checked her handbag while you were in the loo–not there either. I even asked the nurse on the ward if they’d been on her when they undressed her. No keys.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I lean against the pay machine, feeling shaky. ‘That’s creepy. You think they’re planning to come back later and clear the house?’

  ‘It’s not exactly full of valuable antiques, is it? Could have been another panic thing–saw the keys, grabbed them. They’re probably in a hedge by now. All the same, I’d rather you didn’t sleep there until the locks are changed.’

  He takes the ticket from the machine and walks towards the pickup, his face screwed up in thought. Something else he’s not sharing?

  ‘Have you told the police about the keys?’ I ask.

  ‘They’d left, hadn’t they?’

  ‘You could have phoned them.’

  The ponytail quivers; his mouth turns down tightly. ‘Don’t believe in telling the police everything. Never trust a pig.’ He makes it sound like an old country saying rather than a piece of outdated hippie slang.

  But what’s he concealing from me?

  On the way out of Swindon, we both realize we haven’t eaten. John swings the truck round and we find a late-night chippy in a row of shops off the ring road. ‘What do you want?’ he asks.

  ‘What are you having?’ I’m too tired to make decisions for myself.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘John, you haven’t eaten all day, have you? Unless you managed a sandwich this afternoon.’ His face tells me he didn’t. ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re fasting. Not tonight, John. I want to sleep, don’t want to be kept awake by your bloody drum.’

  ‘I’ll use a CD and wear headphones.’

  ‘Do you have to?’

  The trouble is, John’s so rational most of the time that I forget he can also be Mr Weird.

  ‘I need to go looking for your grandmother’s guardian. After a shock, she could have lost it.’ He doesn’t need to carry on, to remind me what a shaman believes about the power animal buried in the psyche of each and every one of us, a guardian spirit that protects us.

  Without it, you die, sooner or later.

  The sheets on the spare bed at John’s are chilly, and my legs are restless. He’s still moving around downstairs, assembling his stuff for the journey, perhaps stewing a pan of magic mushrooms, though he’s so experienced a psychic traveller he doesn’t need hallucinogenics. The drumming is enough to take him into a trance and go wherever a shaman goes, through the cave into the Lower World, where everything is…different. The same place as the real world, according to John, but altered, like a transparent film that overlies it, or vice versa. You see things there that are magical: magic, that is, in the sense that they represent what is deep down true. So when someone’s sick, the way a shaman sees it in the magic world, they’ve lost their power animal. The shaman has to journey to find it and give it back to them, or they die.

  ‘How do you know it’s theirs?’ I asked, as we came into the cottage tonight. Silly question.

  ‘It appears four times,’ he says. ‘That’s the sign. Fourth time you grab it. Besides, I’ll–know.’ He looked at me, unapologetic. ‘I realize you have trouble with this, Indy, but think of it as symbolic. Jung’s archetypes, that sort of thing. Psychological concepts represented by symbols. Works for me, same way God works for some people.’

  Downstairs, the living-room door closes softly. Wherever he’s going, he’s about to set off to find what my grandmother has lost.

  CHAPTER 51

  29 August 1942

  There was a bird calling, a crazy wet bird in a bush, singing its heart out to the night as I limped down the track from the hill. Avebury was dark in the blackout, the rain keeping people indoors. My legs wouldn’t carry me further. I wanted warm water, clean sheets, milk in a tall glass, a hand stroking my limp, knotted hair.

  I stumbled through the churchyard, past Mam’s grave, still a heap of earth and no headstone. Through the iron kissing gate onto the cobbles of the stableyard, by the museum where I used to work, where the other Charlie lay in his glass coffin. Then up the path between the lavender to the side door of the Manor. The beech trees in the garden rustled anxious, like, telling me to turn back, no good would come of it. No gleam of light between the heavy blackout curtains.

  Please, God, let him be here. I knocked. S
ilence. Put a hand to my forehead, could feel the heat of my skin, the chill of my body where my damp skirt and blouse clung to me. Oh, Lord, he wasn’t here, there was nobody, not even Mr Waters the butler, what would I do now?

  Better that, maybe, than Mrs Keiller. What was I thinking of? What would I have done then?

  The door swung open, light knifing across the lawn.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, stepping into the porch. ‘Heartbreaker. You poor little mite.’ Behind him, pulling together the curtains that hung behind the door to preserve the blackout, was Mrs Sorel-Taylour, shock on her face to see me.

  Mr Keiller took hold of my shivering arms. ‘You’re soaked to the skin. Mrs S-T, could you ask someone to run a bath? She’ll catch a fever, if she hasn’t already. Did they send a telegram? You poor child, all alone, no wonder you came to us.’

  How could he know? The chill in me was so deep I couldn’t grasp any of this. In the parlour, Mr Young was standing by the fireplace. He gave me the kindest smile, but pity was etched on his solemn face. Why were they all here? Words buzzing round the room like faulty electric circuits. Someone said, here, give her this, it’ll warm her, and Mrs Sorel-Taylour handed me a glass of brandy. But one of those words was already melting my frozen brain, beginning to burn, letters of fire. Telegram.

  Only one thing a telegram meant in them days, and never good.

  CHAPTER 52

  Drumbeats in the dark, louder, faster, louder, LOUDER…

  I come awake to the sound of hammering on the front door, my heart thudding in time, sun hitting my eyes through the thin curtains. My watch on the bedside table says half past nine: full morning.

  Shit. Meant to be up hours ago. The knocking starts again. One of John’s clients?

  I wrap myself in the threadbare towelling dressing-gown John leaves for guests on the back of the spare-room door. Across the landing the door to his room is half open. He’s spark out, shirtless but still in his jeans, on the bed. Anyone else, I’d give them a good shake, but John’s adamant that people should only ever be roused gently from sleep–another of those moments where, apparently, you can do untold damage by scaring away their power animal. So I draw his door quietly closed and leave him to it, making my way down the narrow uncarpeted stairs on bare feet as the next bout of thunderous knocking begins.

  On the doorstep stands DI Jennings. He doesn’t look at all surprised to find me at John’s. ‘Good morning, Miss Robinson. Sorry to be so early’–you can tell he doesn’t think it’s early at all, but we’re a pair of slovenly hippies so it would be early to us–‘but I wanted to catch you before you left for the hospital.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Panic shoots up my throat. The police come to tell you when someone’s died, don’t they? No, that’s ridiculous, the hospital would have phoned. Bastard, I bet he knew I’d be freaked. I’m starting to understand why John has a down on the police.

  ‘I was expecting to find you at Trusloe because our scene-of-crime officers arrived at half past eight this morning to take fingerprints.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ I close my eyes in frustration. ‘I thought the other policeman said…Nobody told me. And John’s tacked plywood over the back door…Sorry. Look, can I get dressed? We were back late from the hospital. Step inside, I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I did tell Mr Bolger the SOCOs would arrive this morning. Didn’t he pass it on?’

  I leave him in the kitchen, assuring me he’s perfectly capable of making his own cup of tea. Or, translated, of having a good nose round while I’m upstairs. I throw on jeans and a T-shirt as fast as I can, trying to remember what I should have been doing this morning before the world broke up. Well, ringing Corey to cancel my shift at the caf can wait.

  ‘Would you mind…’ I put my head round the kitchen door to find DI Jennings with his reading glasses on and his fat red face pressed to John’s crop-circle calendar. ‘Won’t be long. I have to call the hospital to find out how my grandmother is.’

  DI Jennings’s expression conveys surprise that I haven’t done so already.

  ‘I was asleep until…’ For Christ’s sake, why am I justifying myself? He’s a master of making the innocent feel guilty. ‘The nurses don’t like people calling too early,’ I finish lamely.

  It takes three tries on the phone in the living room to reach the ward. Turns out to be doctors’ rounds, no one able to tell me much. ‘She slept well, though,’ says the nurse, brightly.

  At the kitchen table, DI Jennings pushes a mug of lukewarm black coffee towards me. ‘Didn’t know if you took milk.’ He proffers the bottle.

  ‘Oh, you found the sugar all right?’

  ‘Just kept opening cupboards.’

  I’m sure you did. ‘When will the fingerprint people be coming back?’ I ask.

  ‘They’ve finished. Your friend John hadn’t done a very good job with the plywood, and he’d forgotten to lock up too. We thought you wouldn’t mind if we let ourselves in.’ His eyes dare me to disagree. ‘We’ll need your fingerprints, of course, and Mr Bolger’s.’

  ‘Of course.’ I try to sound like I’m completely in control. ‘I want this bloke caught, Inspector.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m coming to,’ he says. ‘You do know your friend John has a conviction for ABH?’

  It isn’t John. No way. He’s the most harmless bloke I know.

  ‘See, Miss Robinson, I’ve no reason to doubt you’re telling the truth when you say you were at work yesterday’ DI Jennings’s narrowed eyes suggest he’ll be checking carefully nonetheless. ‘But Mr Bolger seems to have spent most of the day on his own, apart from the time you were with him.’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘He loves Frannie…’ Jennings’s furry eyebrows rear. ‘I mean, he’s an old friend of the family. And he has his own key. Anyway, Frannie would open the door to him. He wouldn’t need to break in–’ The eyebrows writhe like caterpillars, sceptical. If you wanted to make it look like a break-in–

  No, for God’s sake. The bastard’s trying to manipulate me. John wouldn’t do anything of the kind, and if you really wanted to make it look like a break-in, you’d take her purse.

  ‘See, half the time these things are family,’ says Jennings. ‘Granny-bashing’s a lot more common than people think. And we talked to your grandmother’s social worker.’

  ‘Adele.’

  ‘No, she’s on holiday. The other one, at the day centre. Bob. He says your grandmother is disturbed about something. She starts screaming for no apparent reason. Classic. Maybe your friend John didn’t mean to hurt her, but she started screaming and it wound him up, terrible noise it can be, red rag to someone with a violent temper–’

  ‘No,’ I say, firm. ‘He doesn’t have a violent temper. And if it was him, don’t you think she’d have said? She was conscious, in the hallway, the paramedic can tell you, and John was standing right beside her…’

  ‘Exactly Intimidating her. She’s frightened to death of him.’

  ‘She’s not. You don’t know my grandmother.’ ‘Or she’s confused.’

  John is still sprawled across the bed, eyes closed. I shake his shoulder roughly.

  ‘Wh–’

  ‘Get up. The police want to talk to you. Jennings has already grilled me.’

  His eyes come open, bloodshot faded blue, pinprick pupils. ‘Tell them I’ll call them back…’

  ‘Not on the phone. Jennings is downstairs.’ Rotating his teacup thoughtfully, I bet, to read in the swirling tealeaves the secret of whether it was John or me who beat up Fran. ‘If you took something last night, I hope to God you didn’t leave it lying around.’

  John closes his eyes. He looks tired unto death, grizzled stubble furring the seams and gullies of his hollowed cheeks. ‘Don’t think so…’

  That doesn’t bode well. I leave him to dress, and hurtle downstairs before Jennings finds anything, wondering how to make him understand the relationship between John, Frannie and me.

  On my way to the hosp
ital, I park in Avebury outside the main office to explain why I might not be around for a few days.

  Graham, eating a custard cream, strolls out of the kitchen as I walk in. Lilian looks up from her computer screen, with a concerned expression. Indy–we weren’t expecting to see you today,’ she says. News travels in Avebury, it seems. ‘How is your poor gran?’

  ‘Not sure. The doctors aren’t giving much away, and they’ve started talking about doing tests, though what for I can’t imagine. They must have X-rayed every bone in her body.’

  ‘I heard it was a break-in.’ Graham’s face is unusually expressionless. Oh, God, don’t let gossip about John have started already. Why did it have to be Corey’s husband on duty yesterday?

  ‘It was a break-in,’ I say firmly.

  John’s at the police station. Jennings took my fingerprints himself, at the cottage, but he wants John to have DNA taken. There was blood on some of the broken glass on the floor.

  Lilian shakes her head. ‘They’ll never catch anyone. Not unless somebody informs.’ She looks me straight in the eyes as she says it. ‘Your shifts at the caf are being covered. I’ll tell the television people as well, just in case. Let us hear when…you know anything.’

  I nod and walk out of the office, feeling two sets of eyes on my back.

  At the hospital, Frannie is asleep again. ‘It is sleep, isn’t it?’ I ask the nurse. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘She was awake earlier, when we took her down to X-ray. Groggy, but charming the porters. Tired her out, though. She’ll wake if you touch her.’